As sources Historical Novels have disadvantages. However well they are researched they are written to entertain not, primarily to educate and to inform. They cannot be dismissed as sources for they may have other insights to offer which a secondary historical source may not have, nor be capable of. Nelson on, the eve of battle may have had doubts and fears. What he himself wrote was probably for public consumption if he were killed. What he really felt we may never know but a writer less constrained by factuality may give us deeper insights into the fears and doubts a man my have as he faces his possible death. “England expects,” was for the morale of his men. The prayer he wrote was for other eyes, but we are all human and only the berserk Viking, biting the edge of his shield in battle rage looks forward to the opening salvoes with anything but apprehension.
Novelists, biographers and Historians share the same related skills of imagination and empathy, They also need, if they are to write successfully, the skills of communication and the need to consider the audience for whom they are writing. A tedious, factual account, with lengthy quotations from the sources he uses may only serve to bore, even the most dedicated student. Communication is about capturing your audience and inviting them to share you enthusiasm and your illustration of the events.
Certainly Bernard Cornwell paints characters from his imagination and though some of them are larger than life yet he manages to give the reader some of the feelings that stirred the participants of the battles he describes. On the other hand just having your audience, or your readers entranced, unable to put down your work does not make it an accurate record and assessment of the events it purports to describe.
Walter Scott glorified the free and savage defender of Scottish freedom and rights when in fact many of the Jacobite soldiers only joined because their landlords told them to and their crofts would have been burned had they not followed the clan leader. Many, of course deserted as soon as they conveniently could, deeming the cause of the (not so bonny) Prince Charles Edward Stuart a lost one and wishing just to be left alone.
Another case in point is that of the Arthurian legends. These cast the leader of a Celtic war-band in the Romantic light of the Myth of the Chivalry of the High Middle Ages. So he becomes "King" Arthur complete with round table and a gentleness which had little place in the culture of the descendants of that same war band of the dark ages.
Historians may be guilty of myth making or of genuflecting to a myth. Not so very long ago, every student dissertation had to recognize the Marxist view of history and make some sort of nod towards the class struggle. If he did not then he was unlikely to get a good degree. Now we are all Post modernists and have to note the uniqueness of cultures, of time and of place, now Communism and the Berlin wall have collapsed and, with it, academic radicalism.
So we have the Scylla of too rigid and wooden factualism which makes for tedious reading and the Charybdis of imagination run riot into a rippingly good yarn, epic or heroic song which may tickle the imagination of the hearers but do no service to the truth.
All of the above may be well or poorly researched. All may or may not use their imagination and their skill of empathy to present an interesting picture, or a thrilling but scarcely credible view of the past. Hollywood history being another case in point, and in many cases the horrible example. No novelist has poor communication skills since that would mean books remaining for ever in manuscript form. On the other hand prominent academics can get away with poor writing to a certain extent but may still do a disservice to their students.
Even fantasy writing may be not as far from the truth as may be imagined. Terry Pratchett's Discworld series has tales which one soon understands as having several levels of belief. First there is the "good yarn" type of story told with skill and lots of humour by the author. That is the superficial, the surface reading. That may be all the reader wants and so be it. However, it does not take the discerning reader long to find that the situations in which the characters are cast take us to another level of understanding. Here are "people", in the form of were wolves, golems, trolls, dwarves gargoyles and witches. We find ourselves identifying ourselves with them and we realise that they are, sometimes a clever send up of our society and its follies, and sometimes we see our own follies and foibles, grotesquely displayed. Next time you pick up a Discworld book remember you are picking up a story that operates on several levels of understanding. So understand and learn.
People say to me, “I don't read fiction, I prefer factual stuff”. Fine, I like factual "stuff" as well, but then what do we mean by "factual". It is possible to argue that fiction may be more true than fact since good fiction deals with the human condition. Can we say that Dickens was not "factual". The workhouse where Mr. Bumble was the beadle was real, it was a fact, there were many of them as any local historian will tell you. There must be more workhouse scandals in English history than local historians can record. Perhaps Oliver himself is rather overdrawn as unbelievably goody-goody, but then that was what the reading public of the day required. So was Fagin overdrawn but Sykes, Nancy, and the vast array of cockney characters good and bad, were all real.
Then there were certainly schools like the one run by Mr. and Mrs. Squeers. Dotheboys Hall, was real and Dickens, in Nicholas Nickleby took the lid of corruption and abuse. Dickens had a strong social conscience and he wrote accordingly and has left the world a richer place.
If his characters lack the many facets of personality which appear in Shakespeare and one may criticise him for having one-dimensional characters, the goodies being all good and the baddies all bad, that again was what his public wanted and how they understood. Dickens and Shakespeare had that special gift of understanding their public and providing what they wanted. In so doing they also educated that public.
In conclusion I suggest that we ought to take a fresh look at fiction, at all sorts of fiction. Try Conrad for instance and see how Lord Jim was driven by his past. See the sordidness of the petty little life of the Secret Agent and try to think what was the darkness that Conrad explored in Heart of Darkness. Fiction, at its best, and sometimes at its worst, explores the human condition. Would you say that One Day in the Life of IvanDenisovich is fiction or fact? Try them for yourselves, enjoy then, ponder them, and, maybe weep with them.
